Posted
by
Cliff
on Saturday July 15, 2006 @11:45PM
from the cd-information-wants-to-be-free dept.

Horar asks: "There's been a lot of recent fuss over freedb. My position is that freedb was just not free enough, and I would like to find a way to bring all the data into the public domain, just as MusicBrainz has done with much of their data. I had not thought that this would be possible until I received advice from various parties suggesting that it was. So now I ask Slashdot if this is true? Can the freedb data legally be brought into the public domain at this time, and if so how? Most importantly, would it be 'The Right Thing To Do'?"

FWIW, my position is that I felt really F'd over, years ago when CDDB decided to start selling the info I had helped them collect. I thought the whole idea of FreeDB was to correct the mistakes of the past so that this could never be done again.

So yeah, I think this data should be public domain, and I'm not entirely convinced that databases-- collections of facts-- should be able to be protected as intellectual property at all.

FWIW, my position is that I felt really F'd over, years ago when CDDB decided to start selling the info I had helped them collect. I thought the whole idea of FreeDB was to correct the mistakes of the past so that this could never be done again.

So yeah, I think this data should be public domain...

The data being public domain is what allowed cddb.com to get away with what they did. There is a good reason why the freedb project chose to license their database under the GPL.

Uh, yeah. I know that. Where do you think CDDB got all their information before they started selling it? From suckers like you and me who typed in all the CD information. Then, one day, all of a sudden CDDB decided to put all these restrictions on who could access "their" database. "Oh yeah. You built this database for us. Thanks. Now if you want to actually use it, well..."

And CDDB ripped off the users how? Last I checked, both the data and source code they released to the public are what freedb was started with. When CDDB and freedb branched, they started with largely the same thing each other had. And who's got the better service? All of this really sounds like sour grapes by people who threw in their lot with the side who could only copy and not actually innovate;they're angry because freedb never went anywhere.

Nobody here seems to have a clue about copyright law, or about the actual state of freedb data. First, the original CDDB data was never released under the GPL. Why not? Perhaps because you can't GPL data, only source code. But nobody here is actually a lawyer, so that little fact never seems to see the light of day here. Second, read those little CDDB data files, the ones that first came from CDDB itself. They all say "Copyright Ti Kan". That's right, a legal copyright notice that the data is owned by an actual individual. By law, that simple statement is enough for Ti Kan himself to claim ownership of the data. But copyright law does not protect collections of data (like the phone book), so it's questionable if the data is really protected or not.

By releasing the data under a different copyright (as they have already done, frankly), freedb would essentially be saying, "We're going to steal this data from Ti Kan. But we think we're justified because we're free and open and FU to anyone who wants to keep data from being free. Even if we don't own it. Besides, copyright law is in our favor, so never mind if it's hippocritical or unjustified for us to make this data our own. We don't care, and nobody can stop us." But because the law is somewhat murky, and because the provenance of the current dataset is unclear, the data is essentially public domain already. But those who are pushing to make it officially public domain are just as "greedy" as those thieves they accuse of taking the data from the users. If you stole it from others, I can steal it from you! Then I'd be stealing from you, not them.

I don't know where you're checking, but you're very wrong. CDDB (and it's data), when it was started, was GNU GPL. This was back in the mid-90s. I know, because I was there inputting data into the CDDB database and getting lots of good information about other CDs in my collection from the fledgling CDDB database.When FreeDB forked, they took the last freely available GPL codebase and dataset, and went off to continue what Ti Kan started. I'm not sure where you get the idea that data use can't be govern

I recall reading in the past that non-creative databases are protected under copyright in some countries, though not in the USA. I believe those countries are primarily European, but cannot say for sure. So I guess the GPL could apply, depending on where you live. In the USA, feel free to blatantly disregard copyright on any non-creative (fact based) database.

In your point of view, all the credit card and bank databases should be public domain too? For this information, I think maybe it could be public domain, but regardless of what happens I think the RIAA will sue in the near future. They can sue people for anything.

A couple of key differences:

1. I never said that all databases should be public domain. I said that I wasn't convinced they should be considered intellectual property, a term used to describe artistic works and forms of expression. That's what copyright was meant to protect.

2. I am not against the protection of proprietary information in general, such as medical records, bank databases, or the recipe for coke. If anything, the owner if this information should be YOU, the patient, bank customer, or coca cola company. Aggrigators or maintainers of databases, should have an interest in keeping this information private to protect your interest, when it makes sense to do so. But really, I don't see anyone as "owning" the fact that you have such-and-such a credit card number, or the fact that you once had an AIDS test. You may seek or expect to have this information considered private or protected in some manner by whomever maintains it in accordance with a privacy polciy, but this is different from claiming "ownership" of collections of unfiltered, uninterpreted facts.

3. This is the same kind of intellectual property insanity that leads to companies "patenting" parts of the human genome.

Sooner or later, all this arbitrary classification of information is going to get a major reality check.

I said that I wasn't convinced [databases] should be considered intellectual property, a term used to describe artistic works and forms of expression.

So if I spent 3 billion dollars and mapped out every cubic meter of NYC in 3-D, to within a few meters accuracy, and used that in the next Grand Theft Auto game, you are saying you should be able to just copy that data wholesale and use it in Flight Simulator 2007?

What incentive do I have to gather that kind of data if I don't even own it? Shouldn't I just wai

"So if I spent 3 billion dollars and mapped out every cubic meter of NYC in 3-D, to within a few meters accuracy, and used that in the next Grand Theft Auto game, you are saying you should be able to just copy that data wholesale and use it in Flight Simulator 2007?"

Mmmm.... What commitment have you made to the original architects of the buildings that you've mapped out in NY? To the workers that built the streets? Are you paying them royalties or license fees? Do they 'own' their 'design'? Will your hypothetical "GTA-The Big Apple" make less money if our friend does use the same database in Flight Simulator? The point many are missing here is that databases are not creative acts, ie, not what IP was designed to protect; they are in fact labor intensive, even tedious. A 'database' is most saliently protected as a 'trade secret' or some such nonsense, but in the end I'm not sure it matters; as I said, does your game make less money if another game uses the same database describing New York?

It's hard to tell exactly where people stand on this based on what has been written, but I think I tend to be somewhere in between the two stances argued so far. It's possible both of the arguments are really just restating the samething in different ways or totally disagree with what I'm about to write.

If I spend 3 billion dollars to map NYC to within a meter for a game I expect my data set to be legally protected. Really, that should be a no brainer. I'm not liscensing they layout - just liscensing the amount of work/money I have done. If you choose to donate time to *my* project that is your choice.

OTOH I don't own the layout of NYC - there is nothing to protect (nor should there be) someone else from doing the same thing. Even if it turns out to be 100% exactly what I have - as long as you came up with it one your own. I can't see how someone would think they can own that type of data.

To use the currect DB example - you shouldn't be able to own the knowledge that Band A wrote song B and it matches some hash of a given CD. That's like owning the layout to New York. However, if some company gathered all the information into a place then *that particular* database should not be copied. That is - having FreeDB simply run a script to query CDDB should be able to be made illegal, some one querying freedb to make thier own should be able to be illegal. If you don't like thier rules (and they fall within legal limits - obviously requiring ownership of your first born to access the DB shouldn't be legal). If you want one with a different liscense collect the data yourself.

But then, that's not really the scope of the original article - they seem to accept that CDDB liscense is legal. At issue is that a group that professes "free" isn't what some contributors call "Free". I don't really have a dog in the fight, I've never cared one way or another - but hey, this is slashdot and I still have an opinion. Before I submit to anything I generally make sure I accept thier liscense - I don't find it entirely honest to submit then complain that it isn't what you want and try and force change. I tend to agree with the original article - it should be free-er especially given how they collect thier data. However that affects my desire to contribute, not complaining after the fact.

Meh, I don't really see the point to much of the arguments. Databases should be legally protected (copyright or whatever is needed). The individual facts should not be legally protected (unless there is an overriding need of privacy such as facts like SSN's or credit card numbers). Read licenses before submitting work, if you don't like them don't submit work. If you really dislike them - start your own project. It seems pretty simple - someone violated any of the rules and you owned it you would be ticked (and I mean "you" as the current reader) - no reason to think that you should be able to violate it when it's against someone else.

"If I spend 3 billion dollars to map NYC to within a meter for a game"If you spend 3 billion dollars to map NYC for a game, I really hope you lose every cent of it, and learn a lesson.

There is no advantage for society as a whole in encouraging waste like that, those 3 billion dollars worth of work would be more or less a loss to the economy as a whole. If you couldn't recoup the money, then _GOOD_. Maybe that'll keep others from trying the same thing.

If I spend 3 billion dollars to map NYC to within a meter for a game I expect my data set to be legally protected. Really, that should be a no brainer.

So what if you blow 3 billion dollars? That's your problem. It's not a creative work so it can't be copyright. Better you just made a fictional map. A week or so ago some scientists cracked the encryption of the Galileo GPS signal, so they could use it for free. Their lawyers said it was fair game, as it was just data describing locations, even thjough it p

Well, I have no idea what stupid things foreign copyright laws do, but FYI in the United States, copyright does not involve novelty. It is entirely possible to have two identical, independently created works, where both are copyrighted and neither infringes upon the other.

Of course the Constitution also prohibits copyrighting facts or uncreative compilations of facts, and couldn't give less a of a crap about mere effort. We're not interested in protecting effort. We're interested in promoting the progress of science by encouraging creativity. Our limited, often lack, of protection for databases is entirely deliberate.

And note that the database industry is pretty big in the US, so apparently we're doing the right thing by not subsidizing them.

It is entirely possible to have two identical, independently created works

Not if the author of the first work managed to flood the world with knowledge of its existence. Under U.S. copyright case law, copying happens where 1. the new work is substantially similar to the old work, and 2. the new work's author has had access to the old work. For instance, if a song was played on the radio ten years ago, everybody is assumed to have had access to it. Then the danger of coincidental similarity poses a difficu [slashdot.org]

If someone goes to the work of building a compilation of materials that is expensive to build and maintain, their efforts should be protected. Tough luck if you want to use their game data in a new commercial game YOU are putting out. The law shouldn't protect freeloaders like this. If you want to use their data either license it or go out and collect it yourself.Assuming you can create an equivalent compilation without stealing the data then your rights should be protected as well. It is not difficult to d

If someone goes to the work of building a compilation of materials that is expensive to build and maintain, their efforts should be protected.

Why?

The law shouldn't protect freeloaders like this.

Why not? And just so you know, these are honest questions.

It is not difficult to demonstrate originality in creation when enormous amounts of energy are expended in the process of doing so.

Oh? Well, I seem to recall that the Supreme Court said this, about this very subject:

It may seem unfair that much of the fruit of the compiler's labor may be used by others without compensation. As Justice Brennan has correctly observed, however, this is not "some unforeseen byproduct of a statutory scheme." It is, rather, "the essence of copyright," and a constitutional requirement. The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This principle, known as the idea-expression or fact-expression dichotomy, applies to all works of authorship. As applied to a factual compilation, assuming the absence of original written expression, only the compiler's selection and arrangement may be protected; the raw facts may be copied at will. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.

There are two answers. You provided the first when you cited the legal argument about social utility. Maximing it requires content to be produced in the first place. And that requires measures to protect creators from unfair competition. The second is a moral argument about the selectivity of protecting the fruits of only certain types of labour. Why should someone who takes an afternoon to write a short story have their works protected but s

Your first answer is just plain wrong. There is no social utility to maximising collection of unneeded, uncreative data. Quite the opposite.
The second argument, if it's valid at all, argues against copyright entirely, not for extending the privilege to uncreative works as well.
Your arguments are truly absurd. An analogy would be to claim that if I choose to spend all day rolling a large rock up the hill, and then roll it back down every night, I surely deserve a nice hefty paycheck guaranteed me from th

If someone goes to the work of building a compilation of materials that is expensive to build and maintain, their efforts should be protected.

The courts disagree. This was tested in the case of telephone directories. Ma Bell claimed that it was illegal for someone to copy the contents of the phone book and publish their own version. The courts ruled that collections of facts, with no creative element, are not subject to copyright law. Copyright protects creative expressions, not sweat.

That's not to say that databases can't be protected through other legal mechanisms, but the "free ride" that society grants copyright holders does not apply to databases. Instead, if you want to protect your database, you have to make it a trade secret (which requires taking great care to protect it yourself) and/or protect it contractually.

In this case, not so much. The EU has issued the "Database Directive", which protects compilations, but AFAIK, no EU member countries have actually created the enabling legislation. At present, I don't believe that any country in the world protects compilations.

I was making a normative argument, incidentally.

In that case, I think you're arguing for something that would be a bad idea. We should be carefully scaling back the extent of copyright law because it is less

We should be carefully scaling back the extent of copyright law because it is less important and less necessary than it was in previous times when publishing was expensive, not increasing its scope.

Easier copying enables people to spread existing materials more widely, so that more people can benefit from them at low cost. But there is a downside. It also drastically reduces the ability of anyone in the market to fund the development of these sorts of compilations. Why should I develop something that will t

Easier copying enables people to spread existing materials more widely, so that more people can benefit from them at low cost. But there is a downside. It also drastically reduces the ability of anyone in the market to fund the development of these sorts of compilations. Why should I develop something that will take a huge investment if it will be copied?

I suspect the answer actually lies in the same thing happening as with software, and you can already see it emerging - freemapping projects for cities, Wikipedia, are all examples of open databases. Eventually you'll get a tipping point, where it will become uneconomic for developers to use anything else, regardless of the merits (we can see this now with database technology).However:
>I said, does your game make less money if another game uses the same database describing New York?If I paid for

have handed a competitive advantage to another firm (they didn't need to risk $10 million on doing the initial mapping against something that could have been a flop).
You're painting an overly simplistic picture of business if you think that it's just about how much money you can make - it's also always about denying your competitors air.

Denying your competitors air is fine as a business strategy. But it's not something society should facilitate because it leads to less wealth in total, even if possibly

I didn't say it was nice behaviour, but unfortunately it's exactly the one our society does facilitate, given that presented with a democratic choice the majority have voted time and again against supporting the public domain through higher taxation.

As said, I suspect that the answer lies in building the alternative, as has happened with software

NixLuver had good points I was going to make myself, which I won't bother repeating. Consider them seconded.

So if I spent 3 billion dollars and mapped out every cubic meter of NYC in 3-D, to within a few meters accuracy, and used that in the next Grand Theft Auto game, you are saying you should be able to just copy that data wholesale and use it in Flight Simulator 2007?

So if I spent 3 billion dollars measuring the speed of light to 20 digits accuracy, are you are saying that I should "own" the speed of light? That I should "own" that number? That I should own that fact? That anyone wanting to use that number in any game or in any other software would have to pay me whatever price tag I make up? Does it become my property simply because I assert that it is "intellectual property"?

What incentive do I have to gather that kind of data if I don't even own it?

Apparantly your motivation was that you personally wanted to know and use those facts. No one if forcing you to do it if you don't want to. No one is forcing you to pay surveyors of you dont want to.

And by the way, by your logic you would have to be paying all of the other freely published facts you make use of while making that game. Apparantly had some silly notion that you would be paying somebody when you copied the fact into your game that New York is 719 miles from Chicago, and that you paying someone when you copied the fact that New York is 204 miles from Washington D.C., and that you would be someone when you copied into your game physics engine the fact that the acceleration of gravity is 32.2 feet per second per second. Etc etc etc.

It's a GOOD thing that you do not have to spend months or years tracking down god-knows-how-many "owners" and paying them god-knows-how-much money each when you make use of a thousand different published facts when you make a game or anything else. It's good that people do not need to engage in economicly wasteful duplication recollecting the same facts of reality just to establish a rediculous independant ownership of the exact same facts. In fact if you decide you don't want/need that crazy 3D map of New York, you can make your game for FREE and still make use of the distance between cities and a thousand other various published facts.

Well gee! Look at that! Not having to pay people to copy readily available facts is an incentive for people to create stuff! And guess what? People still keep accumulating and publishing all sorts of facts!

Should you be able to ignore both his and my intellectual property rights

No one should be able to ignore anyone's patents.No one should be able to ignore anyone's trademarks.No one should be able to ignore anyone's trade secrets.No one should be able to ignore anyone's copyrights.

A physical fact is not an invention and thus cannot be patented.

To the extent you find a way to use physical fact as a trademark, it is not trademark infringment anyone to use it so long as they do not pretend to *be* the trademark holder and do not represent themselves as engaging in that business under that mark.

A physical fact *might* be a trade secret, but once you freely choose publish that fact then you have by definition voluntarily given up its secret status. Trade secrets are only protected by law so long as you actually make proper legal efforts to maintain that secret status.

A fact is not a creative work, and thus cannot be a copyrighted work. To quote the US Supreme Court "Article I, 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution mandates originality as a prerequisite for copyright protection. The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. Since facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship, they are not original, and thus are not copyrightable... the most fundamental axiom of copyright law - that no one may copyright facts or ideas". As the text of copyright law has been revised over the years, Congress has o

So if I spent 3 billion dollars and mapped out every cubic meter of NYC in 3-D, to within a few meters accuracy, and used that in the next Grand Theft Auto game, you are saying you should be able to just copy that data wholesale and use it in Flight Simulator 2007?

Pretty much. It's not like you created that data; it was already there, and you merely found it. And if you're being thorough, you're not being creative with regard to the selection of data. You're also probably not being creative with its arrange

I think you have missed the point. If you spend 3 billion dollars mapping every cubic meter of NYC thats all well and good. If you then don't publish that data, there isn't a thing anyone can do about it. You can keep your data private. If you publish data then you have to convince people that handing you a monopoly on it's replication is a good thing. For the most part a free market capitalis theory of economics would suggest you deserve no protection. Let the market decide what your database is worth. How

The RIAA will soon assert that the information is their IP and therefore using FreeDB will give them all the information they need to sue you.

And in this country you can sue anyone for anything, provided you can pay for your lawyers' fees. In the RIAA's case, they're betting (usually correctly, by making sure they sue people who can't afford to defend themselves) that you can't, and therefore will have to do whatever they demand.

That is 10 years old. According to http://www.tashian.com/carl/docs/copyright/ [tashian.com] "Because of the controversy surrounding the issue, however, WIPO took the proposal off the table almost immediately at the conference." There are interesting quotes there, the brunt of which comment on how restricting databases would hobble scientific work.

And in this country you can sue anyone for anything, provided you can pay for your lawyers' fees.

And, I believe, anyone can file a motion for summary judgement against the plaintiff on the basis that there is no evidence against them. And I don't think you'd have to pay a lawyer's fee for that, either, it being a fairly simple argument. Just do a bit of research about what to put in it.

(Disclaimer: I have no experience of US courts, but I have read a little about them and my experience of UK courts sugges

freedb.org claims the data is licensed [freedb.org] under the GPL; therefore, you should have the right to distribute it as you see fit, provided you comply with the GPL.

As far as whether you can free it from the GPL, I believe the answer is no. While the data is arguably merely facts, and therefore not protected by copyright law, I think there was a copyright amendment recently that made a particular compilation of data subject to copyright. I don't know whether it passed or not.

Here's the Slashdot article [slashdot.org] on the subject. Unfortunately, TFA it links to is gone.

Depends who owns the copyright. If it's stated that you assign copyright to FreeDB, they could simply dual license it, which would effectively make the GPL null and void as the public domain version would let you do anything with it.

If you "place" it into the Public Domain, no one may control it. This means a proprietary program may use it and extended it, and restrict it use like cddb.com !!! See wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain [wikipedia.org]

I'd have to wonder whether one can exert a copyright to data you found as part of other people's products. If anyone can own the rights to that information, wouldn't it be the owners of those products?

"As far as whether you can free it from the GPL, I believe the answer is no. While the data is arguably merely facts, and therefore not protected by copyright law, I think there was a copyright amendment recently that made a particular compilation of data subject to copyright." - I am not a lawyer either, but I think I can help you out. Copyright law protection compilations where subjective taste is used to distinguish what gets included from what does not. I believe this was the distinction the Surpreme court used in Feist V Rural to determine that anthologies (the "The best of Edgar Allan Poe", for example) are protected by copyright, whereas complications of data that have no subjective criteria for inclusion (the phone book, in that particular case) are not subject to protection. In this case, I suspect they will take any CD's data; meaning that there is no subjective critera for inclusion, meaning that no copyright can be applied.

To add another twist on that, it was ruled long, long ago that maps were not copyrightable since they were simply facts. However, map makers began introducing deliberate errors into their maps. The courts ruled that the deliberate errors were copyrightable. Thus anyone who copied the errors from the map were violating the copyright. On the other hand, I believe the court ruled that error in a phone book were not copyrightable.

Got a citation for this?Maps have always been copyrightable in the US, partially on their artistic value, and partially because they're selective as to which facts they include and arrange.

But false or erroneous facts and theories which are presented as true are treated as facts and are uncopyrightable. There are cases to this effect, such as Nash v. CBS, but I've never heard of anything to the contrary.

The reason that authors will sometimes introduce unique errors is not to manufacture grounds for infringe

To add another twist on that, it was ruled long, long ago that maps were not copyrightable since they were simply facts.

Maps are not "simply facts". Compare several maps of the same area and you'll see great variety in the representaton of these "facts": in terms of use of colour, hatching, fonts, etc. So a map is certainly a creative work and thus copyrightable. You often see a copyright notice in editions of classic (public domain) books. But if they're honest, the copyright is limited to their specific

Just to clarify a bit, the creative part is the selection and arrangement of uncopyrightable facts in the compilation. Uncreative selection (such as the name, address, and number of all phone subscribers in an area) and arrangement (alphabetical order by last name) was unprotectable in Fiest.

Copyright law protection compilations where subjective taste is used to distinguish what gets included from what does not.

The water is somewhat muddied by the existence of Database Rights [wikipedia.org] if you're operating in the EU. I believe the US senate has discussed legislation that would create a similar right there, but I don't think it has happened yet.

This database would be covered by that right:

To qualify for the sui generis database protection, the creator of the database must show that there has been qualitat

First, it looks like the database files are already GPL'd. I'm not sure what you would want to do with the data that isn't allowed by the GPL.

Second, if you want to do something with the database that isn't allowed by the GPL (however the GPL applies to databases), you might want to ask your lawyer whether the freedb database files contain any copyrightable expression, given that the titles themselves are not copyrightable and much of their arrangement may be functional. I haven't looked closely at the files, but it would be worth investigating if for some reason you really wanted to make a derivative work of the database files without GPLing the result.

First, it looks like the database files are already GPL'd. I'm not sure what you would want to do with the data that isn't allowed by the GPL.

The article author is probably connected in some way to the idiot who was working on the new version of freedb but decided to keep his source to himself. My guess is that he wants to repeat what happened with cddb - take freedb and make it his own. Luckily the authors of freedb learned from the cddb experience, and licensed their database under the GPL to prevent

you might want to ask your lawyer whether the freedb database files contain any copyrightable expression, given that the titles themselves are not copyrightable and much of their arrangement may be functional.

You might also want to ask him whether or not you could be affected by the European Database Right, which almost certainly does cover this database. If he doesn't know, get a lawyer in Europe, too, assuming you'll be distributing your copy of the database to Europe.

Considering the poor state of many of the Freedb entries, is that data really useful? I've been volunteering with the MusicBrainz [musicbrainz.org] project since October and I've found the data at Freedb to be a complete mess. MusicBrainz users can use Freedb to import albums so that we don't have to re-enter things into MusicBrainz by hand, but with so many duplicate and poorly edited entries (typos, etc) I'm wondering if it's worth it to even keep the data.

MusicBrainz is a better designed system. It's not limited to the archaic interface and design of the old CDDB system. It has interfaces that programmers can use [musicbrainz.org] to retrieve the same kind of data that they get from Freedb. The site also has a system in place for editing of entries and peer review of changes. I think it's a better solution, although I'm biased because of my involvement and interest with the project.

Since Slashdot users aren't lawyers, here are some selected sections from Feist, the most prominent on-topic case on this issue, decided by the Supreme Court holding that telephone book was not copyrightable. The CDDB and FreeDB databases are very similar to the telephone books in Feist: a compilation of facts, no selection criteria (anything they get, they put in, it's not a database of someone's subjective evaluation of the best CDs), no originality in arrangement.

The more interesting issue is to what extent contracts can modify the background rules of copyright and allow someone to exert copyright-like control over non-copyrightable works. See ProCD. Since the GPL purports to be a license, rather than a contract, it is only enforceable if the underlying work is copyrightable.

[11] Originality is a constitutional requirement. The source of Congress' power to enact copyright laws is Article I, 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to "secure for limited Times to Authors . . . the exclusive Right to their respective Writings." In two decisions from the late 19th Century -- The Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82 (1879); and Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884) -- this Court defined the crucial terms "authors" and "writings." In so doing, the Court made it unmistakably clear that these terms presuppose a degree of originality.

[16]Factual compilations, on the other hand, may possess the requisite originality. The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers. These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they are made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original that Congress may protect such compilations through the copyright laws. Nimmer 2.11[D], 3.03; Denicola 523, n. 38. Thus, even a directory that contains absolutely no protectible written expression, only facts, meets the constitutional minimum for copyright protection if it features an original selection or arrangement.

[17] This protection is subject to an important limitation. The mere fact that a work is copyrighted does not mean that every element of the work may be protected. Originality remains the sine qua non of copyright; accordingly, copyright protection may extend only to those components of a work that are original to the author. Patterson & Joyce 800-802; Ginsburg, Creation and Commercial Value: Copyright Protection of Works of Information, 90 Colum. L. Rev. 1865, 1868, and n. 12 (1990) (hereinafter Ginsburg). Thus, if the compilation author clothes facts with an original collocation of words, he or she may be able to claim a copyright in this written expression. Others may copy the underlying facts from the publication, but not the precise words used to present them. In Harper & Row, for example, we explained that President Ford could not prevent others from copying bare historical facts from his autobiography, see 471 U.S., at 556-557, but that he could prevent others from copying his "subjective descriptions and portraits of public figures." [p*349] Id., at 563. Where the compilation author adds no written expression but rather lets the facts speak for themselves, the expressive element is more elusive. The only conceivable expression is the manner in which the compiler has selected and arranged the facts. Thus, if the selection and arrangement are original, these elements of the work are eligible for copyright protection. See Patry, Copyright in Compilations of Facts (or Why the "White Pages" Are Not Copyrightable), 12 Com. & Law 37, 64 (Dec. 1990) (hereinafter Patry). No matter how original the format, however, the facts themselves do not become original through association. See Patterson & Joyce 776.

Please note that Horar (the submitter) is the one who effectivly let freedb.org die. He worked with them for two years but didn't release any useful code. Now he is activly promoting his own project freedb2.org, promising to release the source but it is still not available.

I wonder why he should care about the data not being public domain, if his software is to be supposed GPL licensed? Unless well... think for your self.

You are totally right. He's clearly managed to destroy cooperation within FreeDB, set the contributors against each other, and now it looks like he's planning to rip off the whole contribution. Something has to be done to stop it. I've contributed to FreeDB; My entries involved careful choice and selection of how to lay out and present the titles. I believe that they are copyright protectable and they were put in purely on the GPL License.

Further, I believe that the heavy level of mistakes and different representations of the same data in the FreeDB database actually helps us in this case. It's clearly an original work and not just a factual representation.

I'd like to get a group of people in a similar situation together to put up a class action suit against Horar. The primary aim will be to restrain him from further license infringement, but I'll put any money recovered from damages awarded towards

We'd need* some money* a lawyer* a good place to organise.

To begin with, we'd try to get him to settle out of court; something like* ceases to work on FreeDB2 or any related projects* pays some compensation to the FreeDB project people

But we would have to be willing to go the whole way. Who would be up for joining? Can anyone set up a site for this. It would be a good chance to test the limits of copyright and also to set an example of GPL enforcement.

You are suggesting a solution to a technical problem that relies upon wasting large quantities of money by feeding it to lawyers. If you were a corporation, slashdot users would mock you openly for doing such a thing.Every minute spent talking about who's at fault and who to sue should be put toward coming up with a better solution to the CD data issue. Since the users of freedb are skewed heavily toward high levels of geekiness, all it should take to cripple Horar's efforts is a better answer to the prob

1. Get an agreement to write code for freedb2. Don't release the source code3. Let the admins of freedb quit4. Make the freedb contents public domain5. Incoperate the public domain code in a new (closed) solution6. ?????7. Profit!

The original question was put to slashdot a couple of weeks ago and in the interests of openness I mentioned the website in my submission. The slashdot editors quite wisely held the article for two weeks and have now posted it with all references to my controversial domain removed. Now thanks to you, I just got more advertising on slashdot.

For what it's worth I'm maintaining a news page on the site which shall not be named, and if you have a genuine interest in what is going on, please read that or contact me directly.

Some of his code is already available and the rest he is working on. I personally know Horar to be a firm beliver in OSS but he needs some time to organise and document the code. Have a little patience.

As far as I understand it he promised to show up the code for the last two years. Look: there a very simple thing he can do to make me and everyone else shut up: releasing the code. All of it. Not just tiny bits of character conversion scripts. The code for his currently working freedb compatible server. It doesn't matter if it is messy or uncommented. He just needs to tar it all up, put it under an open source licence and put it on his webspace. If he really wants to open his code he just needs to do this and his creditability is restored. Or he can just say "sorry I was bullshitting you and I'm going to build my own propritary nonfreedb".

Not that I care about the specific matter too much, but why the hell is the author under any obligation to you to release the code before he's ready to? You may not care that it's messy but maybe he does. What right do you have to his code to demand it any sooner or later than he decides to release it?

I'm certain, in the US, at least, there was a case that set a precedent on this sort of data collection. Not long after the man who made the first telephone directory did so (yes he had to call *everyone* to get it), a second lazier man made his own, copying the numbers from the first directory. The first man accused the second of this, taking his ass to court on copyright infringement. The verdict: The court ruled you couldn't own the truth, the information had always existed. The first man had collected it, but he hadn't *created* it, so he couldn't enforce copyright. Copyright applies to works of art, not to facts. . The source of information was irrelevant, if you ignore typesetting etc..

No-one does own the data on freedb. Sure it's now avaliable through many sources, freedb, cddb, Wikipedia, but most importantly it's on the CD. When a CD is released, that data is made public. It doesn't hold significance, it's for reference. freedb don't own it, nor do the record companies. 'Public domain' doesn't even apply, it's not a work of art under threat of imitation. just another catalogue of factual data, like a reference of the colours of common objects. And the truth is everyone's.

No-one does own the data on freedb...When a CD is released, that data is made public.

The only information on the CD itself that's included in freedb is a list of tracks and where they are located on the disc. All of the other information, including artist, song titles, etc. has all been typed by a person and inserted into the database. That's the important data, and it's been inserted into the database via a GPL license--which is not the same as being public.

Not correct. Just because you type it in doesn't mean you own the copyright on it. It is factual information and the song titles can't be copyrighted, so it's effectively public domain info.

You seem to feel that at some point I mentioned copyright, which I didn't. Starting your reply with "not correct" and then saying something unrelated to my comments is lame, but luckily you're so embarrassed by your writing that you are rightly submitting as an AC and no one but me will likely pay attention.

Hi, I was running a freedb mirror for a few years, and had lots of contacts with the team during that period. The demise of freedb was not a pleasant surprise for me. I also must admit that it was the first time that the nickname Kaiser has shown up anywhere for me. I also submitted over 1000 entries over the last few years, mainly for local artists.

I am a bit surprised of the discussion I see here. I fail to see the added-value to anyone of putting the database in the free domain. In my opinion, the only ones who would gain from this are the commercial services like Gracenote (remember that their data used to be free as well), who could integrate it in their engine without giving anything back. I also have the feeling that it will spur a serie of clones, some free, some not, which will grow their own database, probably without sharing that with the others (and with a big fat EULA).

The principal strenghts of freedb are the size of it's database, and it's licence. I do think that a large part of the reason why it got as big, is because of it's licence. Also the commitment that the GPL gives, that is to make sure that any modification stays under the GPL, is great for a database, as it ensures that any update stays open.

For those reasons, i DO NOT agree that my efforts ne put in the public domain.

IANAL, but I am always right nevertheless.;)Okay, let us discuss if the database is copyrightable in the USA, Australia, Canada and the European Union for the hell of it.

First of all, USA. Oh boy, this will be the most controversial passage. It seems that there's a strange consensus that the Feist Publications Inc. vs. Rural Telephone Service Co Inc. case automagically means that freedb is not copyrightable in the US. I argue it _is_ due to several factors, such as originality and innovativity in the way d

The code to generate the DiscID is copyrighted. The algorithm cannot be copyrighted, or patented. (inspite of the attempt of Gracenote to enforce a patent they seem to have acquired on it several years after it was public knowledge; publication which makes it unpatentable in any jurisdiction anyway).The algorithm itself has been well publicized and is required by all client software to make use of the database. Personally I implemented a version of it several years ago in Java.

The 'background notes' on copyright protection of databases in Canada is nothing but an opinion piece from a law library; not actually a legal opinion on database copyright.

As for the rest; have you actually looked at what constitutes the freedb database? It is merely a collection of facts; even the few populated fields which may not be considered factual could be readily stripped out of the files without significant loss the the data value.

The trackid is generated based on a particular algorithm. It is merely calculated based on a few attributes of the disc. There is nothing particularly special about it. Given the same disc anyone, using the algorithm can produce exactly the same discid (which is the point of it).

The problem is that according to opinions I've been given, the GPL never could be applied to the particular case of the freedb data owing to the nature of it. That would mean that people have been submitting data for six years in the mistaken belief that their efforts were being protected from the big bad corporations somehow. If freedb.org has been a big fat lie all this time, wouldn't it be nice to clear that up?BTW Don't confuse the freedb data with the freedb server software. They are different animals

freedb is a free CD and music data base service to look up textual metadata about music, audio or data CDs. This is done by a client which queries the freedb database. As a result, the client displays the artist, CD title, track list and some additional information. Clients are for example CD player, CD ripper and CD burn software. Freedb does not offer such clients.

Therefore, the general public should own the data. It should therefore be "free".

Don't follow you there, I'm afraid. The general public should own the data, therefore you should need consent from the general public before changing licensing terms. Of course, that consent is just about impossible to get, so effectively you can't do it.

The database is 380MB. You can download it via BitTorrent using http://tracker.freedb.org/ [freedb.org] I grabbed my own copy the minute the site's future became an issue so that I had my own permanent copy of everything I had ever contributed.